Wireless communication networks may be used for numerous applications including tactical military and commercial applications. In an exemplary application, military vehicles (e.g., tanks, trucks, airplanes, etc.) may include radios that act as nodes in the wireless communication network. One type of radio is a software defined radio (SDR). A software defined radio may be implemented in existing radios and the existing physical enclosures of these radios (i.e., the legacy radio form factors). In order to receives and transmit signals, vehicle radios are coupled to an antenna or antennas. Mobile military ground vehicles (e.g., tucks, tanks, etc.) may utilize an untuned whip antenna.
There are several problems that may be encountered by using untuned whip antennas on military ground vehicles. When two vehicles are near each other, RF coupling between the whip antennas limits the communication range because of co-located interference (or cosite interference) and forces frequency management to keep transmissions approximately 10% of the frequency apart from reception frequencies. For example, when two ground vehicles, vehicle A and vehicle B, are next to each other, the antennas are in parallel and a large amount of power from vehicle A may be absorbed by vehicle B which distorts the messages/signals received and/or transmitted by vehicle A. Interference, e.g., cosite interference, is also a problem between two dedicated whip antennas on the same vehicle. Previous solutions have involved the addition of, for example, large filters, RF cancellers, high IP3 (Intermodulation Performance of the 3rd Order) receivers or all three in to the radio/transceiver. All of these solutions, however, consumes precious volume inside a radio's form factor (e.g., the physical shape and size of the radio) which may limit how much cosite performance may be obtained. Cosite performance may be limited by the amount of volume available in the radio form factor.
Accordingly, there is a need for an antenna adapter configured to improve cosite performance of an antenna on a military ground vehicle. There is also a need for an antenna adapter which may be used to retrofit existing military ground vehicle antennas.
It would be desirable to provide a system and/or method that provides one or more of these or other advantageous features. Other features and advantages will be made apparent from the present specification. The teachings disclosed extend to these embodiments which fall within the scope of the appended claims, regardless of whether they accomplish one or more of the aforementioned needs.